Sometimes Strangers in a House
by Uozumi
Summary: Looking at her father interacting with her daughter starts Joanna on musing over her parents.


**Fandom** _Star Trek AOS_  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)** James Kirk, McCoy family; no pairing  
**Genre** Family/General  
**Rating** PG-13  
**Word Count** 1794  
**Disclaimer** Star Trek c. Paramount, CBS, NBC, Roddenberry  
**Summary** Looking at her father interacting with her daughter starts Joanna on musing over her parents.  
**Warning(s)** implied drug abuse, character death  
**Notes** I've been struggling with finding desire to write lately and then this idea popped into my head and I just kind of had to write it. I hope it doesn't come off too rough around the edges. I really don't know what genre to put for this.

_**Sometimes Strangers in a House**_

The little girl stole a glance at the man beside her and then carefully set her right ankle on her left knee and tried to grip her sippy cup with one hand. She looked away and then looked back again, timing her sip accordingly with the man taking a sip from his mint julep. From the kitchen window, her mother watched the pair, a small smile creeping onto her lips.

The woman once known as Joanna McCoy before her marriage five years ago was back on Earth for a visit with her father and had brought her young daughter with her. It was the first time she had seen her father in years and the first time grandfather met granddaughter. Joanna continued cleaning up from supper. She was not sure how to predict this first meeting, but now that it was going so well, Joanna felt ridiculous for thinking it could have gone any other way. From the moment, her daughter began to grow hair, it became more and more obvious how much her daughter looked like Joanna's mother only with dark brown eyes.

Joanna was only six when her parents separated. She could remember bits and pieces of her life from as early as two and could remember her immediate family situation being sometimes stable but mostly disjointed. Her mother was hooked on a "housewife high" and her father was part alcoholic, part workaholic. They functioned as a family for a while. Not all her memories were bad. Her parents engaged her and she could tell by the adult she had become they had not neglected her in the time before she could remember. Yet, for every happy memory, there was a lonely memory, maybe even two.

That was why she was not sure how her father would react to her daughter. She never told him what it was like just before he left for Starfleet nor did she tell him about what she went through between that moment and her mother's death. She could remember the two years before he left. Her mother would lock the door when asleep, so after waking from a nightmare, Joanna would wander downstairs. Sometimes her father was still awake working on things from the hospital. Sometimes he was asleep on the sofa. When he was asleep, she would stand in the doorway to the living room and watch him. Seeing him curled up on the sofa made her heart ache in a way she did not understand at the time. Sometimes she wanted to go over and hold her father's hand, but then he would wake and take care of her when she thought he looked like someone should take care of him.

Her mother made her feel just as lonely. Her mother worked during the day and would pick Joanna up in the evenings. When they entered the house more often than not there was a message waiting about how her father would not be coming home. Her mother would make dinner slowly. Joanna would color or as she got older, do homework, at the kitchen table and watch. Her mother would sometimes stop what she was doing, look out the kitchen window, and then just stare. Joanna was never sure what her mother was looking at, but if she looked out another window trying to find something of interest in their backyard, there was always nothing.

They would go fishing every weekend morning that it rained. There was a special pond within walking distance from their house. Her mother packed a lunch and her father would find worms in their yard. Joanna could still remember her yellow raincoat she wore and how there were puddles throughout the path leading to the pond. Sometimes she held onto her father's hand while he carried the tackle box, sometimes she held her mother's hand while she carried the fishing poles, but the fishing trips she remembered most were the ones where she got to hold both their hands at once. They never caught anything really large, but they managed to amass a decent number of fish big enough to fry and eat once they were back at home.

Joanna set the last dish back where it belonged and took a deep breath. After her father divorced her mother and left for Starfleet, her mother began to go downhill. They received everything in the divorce – the Her father family farm, the hovercar, probably all of the money her father had saved all his working life – growing up she tried not to think of him with nothing but the shirt on his back off on some soniccraft on his way to San Francisco. Now she could see him on the porch just back from getting yanked out of retirement by his best friend. It was odd imagining him gallivanting around with Admiral Kirk as if they were still in their thirties. She had only met Admiral Kirk on a handful of occasions, usually because he was around when she saw her father.

Once her parents divorced, her mother promised that she would see her father at least once a year. Yet, two years passed and no such meetings occurred. Joanna was worried that her father did not even want to come back to Georgia when Starfleet Academy had school breaks, let alone have her come to San Francisco to see him. On her eighth birthday while her mother was out on what seemed to be ever lengthening hours at work, Joanna got onto the communicator and recorded a small, simple message. If her father was truly done with her, she did not want her message to take up too much of his time.

The next day she received a reply, then slowly she began to play message tag with her father. It became easier as she got older and her mother stopped paying attention to the voicephone. Joanna spent her teenage years watching her mother's on again off again habits become something more serious. Her mother refused to pop pills in front of her daughter, but Joanna witnessed the aftermath when she woke for school in the morning. Then one morning, she came down to head to high school and found her mother asleep at the kitchen table. She left for school quietly, and returned home to find her mother dead at the kitchen table. That overdoes propelled her into changing her life's ambition from teacher to medicine. She had always denied the family profession, but at her mother's funeral, she decided to embrace it.

Her father had been unable to come to the funeral. Joanna told herself she understood. There was such a time delay in communications to starships, and her parents had not spoken to each other since the divorce that she knew of, yet the loneliness of that big house alone, of having only extended family around her hurt. Her father did arrive two weeks later with the then captain James T. Kirk in tow. Joanna had met Kirk on transmissions over the years, but this was their first in person meeting. The war battered captain was only thirty-three and perhaps if Joanna had not seen him in those transmissions off and on over the years, she might have crushed on him.

She could still remember when just the two of them talked. It was late and her father had long since gone to bed. Joanna could not sleep and wandered downstairs only to find Kirk sitting at the kitchen table watching the stars. The house was located in one of the dwindling areas available to have hardly any light pollution to block such a sight. They exchanged some pleasantries and after a while, she found him telling her something he thought he could not tell her in front of her father. When the transmission came about the death, Kirk, Her father, and their crewmate Spock had all been upon a planet. He had to get creative with his explanation since some portions of the mission were still classified while other portions were not, but the gist was they could not receive communication from the ship nor communicate with the ship at the time. Kirk went on to explain that upon hearing the news, her father asked to come back as quick as they could manage because he knew how hard this would be for Joanna.

Joanna let her fingers rest upon the chair that Kirk had sat in that night as she paused at the door between the kitchen and the porch. Even ten years later, she could still remember one part of what Kirk said exactly, "If he could have been there for you, he would have." Somehow, even at seventeen, she had known Kirk was telling the truth.

Quietly Joanna pulled back the sliding door and stepped out onto the porch. "Did you know that there are dinosaurs in spaceships?" her daughter asked the instant Joanna had closed the door behind her. Her daughter's tone was somewhat skeptical.

"They aren't dinosaurs, honey," Joanna took a chair nearby. "They're called Gorn."

"Well, they look like dinosaurs," her father murmured into his empty glass. He set the glass down on a small table to his right. "Only smaller I guess."

"Their anatomy is very similar to the dinosaurs of Earth," Joanna admitted, "but they are much more advanced and have larger brains." She took the empty sippy cup when her daughter offered it. It was the child's way of communicating she would not want another drink soon. Then she looked at the clock on the wall. It was an antique model rumored to have been crafted by one of their ancestors in the 1950s. It still ran with much effort and care. "It's past your bedtime."

Joanna expected to hear a whine, but instead the small child yawned. "But, Grandpa was going to tell me more stories," the child managed after the long yawn passed.

"And he can do so just as easily once you are in bed," Joanna countered and stood up, picking up her daughter. "If you don't mind, of course, Dad." She looked to the man holding rank of captain, though he would never captain a ship.

"Of course I don't mind," he replied and stood up as well, gathering up what they brought out to the porch. "Just le me know when you're ready." He reached out and ruffled the child's hair.

Joanna smiled and headed off to get her daughter ready for bed. She climbed the steps she had climbed so many times growing up and looked at her daughter who was already showing signs of sleepiness, her cheek nestled against Joanna's shoulder. Silently Joanna hoped that her daughter would not feel the loneliness she had felt in this house.

**The End**


End file.
